Involuntary Acts of Love and Children
by LuteLyre
Summary: It is not that Sasuke wants to leave Konohagakure.


A/N: I do not own Naruto or make money off of this writing.  
Short drabble made as a Christmas Present for my little sister, Suncaught. Ended up having a lot of fun with it. Hope you enjoy darling!

**Involuntary Acts of Love and Children**

X

It's not that Sasuke wants to leave Konohagakure. Really, he doesn't. In fact, it doesn't have very much to do with Sasuke at all. It's a shame, but Sasuke hasn't ever really had much say in what he wants, not for most of his life. Things get decided for him. Blades are bloodied and documents are signed and plots are hatched with knowing glances, and then he is patted on the head and sent on his way.

Sasuke is such a headstrong boy, he likes to think that he has set his own plan in action. He likes to pretend that he is more than just a pawn on the chessboard, and because of his pretty white cheekbones and his flashing red eyes, people let him pretend, but everyone knows better.

So it's not that he really wants to leave Konohagakure. He just can't help it.

Sometimes, Sasuke has dreams. He dreams of a long, sickly-violet tongue that slithers around his neck and squeezes, of chalky white hands that hold him down and slice scalpels down his spine. A silk and satin voice whispers for him to be still like a good boy and watch closely now, as his older brother leaks blood from a slit red smile across his throat and his deadandgone parents reach for him with rotten, maggot-riddled fingers.

Sometimes he dreams of a hand curled tight on the back of his neck, of teeth against his collarbone, and a struck-match heat that licks through his stomach. Sometimes there is hot breath on his mouth, hot breath down his chest, hot breath on his cock. A curled smirk mocks him, sneering at him for being so weak, so _responsive_, and then he shudders awake with an aching groin and his sheets soaked through with sweat.

Naruto knows better than to wake Sasuke from the dreams; Sasuke always leapt to kill if forcibly pulled from sleep, sharingan blazing. Naruto sits up in their futon instead. He watches Sasuke jerk and squirm in his sleep, watches him moan and pant, and knows that Sasuke would kill him for looking.

When the dreams fade, cloudy and smeared across his mind like stains of paint on canvas, Sasuke always wakes with his eyes red and his mouth watering. There is a drooling sweetness in his mouth, one that drips down his chin and coats his teeth and pools in the back of his throat. When he manages to swallow it down, he can never stop himself from licking his lips for hours after, searching for any last drop.

Naruto hates to see him lick his lips. He hates to see Sasuke's eyes glaze over, hates to see him spasm away from Naruto's warm skin, sometimes completely out of the bed. He clenches his fists and waits, struggling to be patient. It is the only time that Naruto ever tries to be patient, but for Sasuke, he will always make sacrifices.

When Sasuke finally jerks awake in the small, unobtrusive hours of the night, and Naruto glimpses his mouth sticky and wet in the slats of white-washed moonlight arching across the room, he feels his ribs tighten sickly. Naruto slides an arm bracingly across Sasuke's chest, pulls him back against the warmth of his skin, and curls his fingers around the sharp angle of Sasuke's jaw.

"Spit it out."

Sasuke always glares, fights him, still half-caught in another world. His tongue shivers in his mouth, eager for a taste, but Naruto has never given up, especially whenever Sasuke is concerned. He grips Sasuke's throat, pinches Sasuke's nose, coaxes his lip open, ignores the way Sasuke writhes against him like an an angry, wounded animal.

Sasuke could kill him.

But he will never do that. That's already been established. It's one of those things that Sasuke likes to think he has perfect control over, that he could destroy Naruto. He wants to believe that he can leave Naruto's bones bleaching in sun without batting an eyelash and then go eat his lunch pretty as you please. Truthfully though, the oldest rule in the book is that Sasuke will never, ever kill Naruto.

So he spits.

In the morning, the puddle on their cracked-tile floor is somehow vanished, but Sasuke's tongue quests searchingly along the back molars of his mouth automatically for the rest of the day, poking and prodding along his gums with an intensity that Naruto observes but does not comment on.

Naruto knows better. There is only so much he can do, after all.

Instead, Naruto uses his body like a cage. He clings to Sasuke, wraps around him like a second skin. He presses his face into Sasuke's neck, twists their wrists and ankles together. When Sasuke wakes slavering, Naruto covers his body with his own, kisses down his neck with a wet, open mouth. He whispers to him soothingly to forget about it. Just forget about it, don't worry, don't worry at all. It doesn't matter.

Sasuke arches under him; a live wire, a silver-gilled fish leaping from the sea to taste something it can almost remember, and Naruto thrusts his hips down.

The thing is, Naruto isn't above actually chaining Sasuke to the bed, if it would stop him from leaving. He wouldn't mind setting up a jutsu that tethers Sasuke to their apartment, or sealing their doors and windows shut on the rest of the world. He isn't above alerting the ANBU guards that still occasionally linger around their apartment when Sasuke gets a particularly glazed look in his eye, when he stops what he's doing and stares into space, when Naruto has to call his name three times before he turns around.

"What is it Naruto?"

"...Nothing."

Naruto likes ramen. He likes the feeling of the sun on his skin. He likes the sound a Kunai makes when it zips through the air, and he likes the smell of warm laundry. He likes sleeping, and jutsu that explode in your face like thunder splitting the sky, and goading Yamato-sensei into paying for dinner at Ichiraku, and he likes Konohagakure, and his teammates. He likes being alive.

But he doesn't like Sasuke. With Sasuke, Naruto feels something that's deeper, and sharper, and more crushingly horrible than anything he's ever felt before, because he loves Sasuke. Naruto's always known what the difference between like and love is.

These are the things that you realize, when you are a small child who has to take care of himself, an unwanted, unloved ward of the city with a tattoo swirl on your stomach nobody wants to tell you about.

There is an egg, the last one in the carton that arrives in front of your door every other week, and you plopped it into the pan to boil a few minutes ago, your stomach growling so loudly because you forgot about eating for a while, and no one was around to remind you. The skillet is large and heavy in your small hand, unbalanced and clumsy. It's made of black iron and is supposed to be used for cooking large dinners of stir-fry vegetables, not the solitary eggs of lonely little boys.

The water starts bubbling, and when you dump the white orb of the egg out it's still too hot for your little fingers. It's not even really close to being cooked, but you are so very hungry and you don't want to wait, you always have to wait for everything else. You eat it anyway.

You burn your tongue on that underdone, creamy egg-white, but you learn things. One of those things is the difference between liking and loving, and that's a very important difference, you understand.

Love is something that only happens a few times in your life. Something that hurts deep in your chest, and doesn't ever go away. Love is underneath Sasuke's skin, and caught like sweat in the lashes of his eyes, and it lingers around the syllables of all the words that Sasuke says, even when he's screaming at Naruto, or cursing at Naruto, or not speaking to Naruto at all. Love is powerful, and it makes Naruto scared sometimes because he loves Sasuke so much, so much more than anything else ever in the whole wide world.

Naruto has bad dreams too occasionally. He dreams that Sasuke kills him, chews him up and spits him out mangled, rips out his heart, slits his throat with one precise, mechanical slice of a silver kunai. He dreams he's a bloodless white corpse, impaled on Sasuke's blade. Sasuke strokes his cold cheek with a sharp-nailed hand, smiles at him, and whispers sweet nothings about his funeral plans. He doesn't know that Sasuke could never do that.

Sometimes Sasuke dreams that Naruto controls him, like a painted marionette with invisible strings on an elaborately contrived stage. He dreams that Naruto cages him up, in an orange-sunlit room with tall windows and heavy doors bolted shut. When he wakes up, sees Naruto's gangly form splayed across the sheets with a thin trail of drool leaking innocently from one corner of his lip, he thinks he's being silly. Sasuke doesn't know that Naruto would hardly hesitate to lock him away.

Sasuke is such a precocious child; he doesn't know that everything has always been decided for him. It's not that he wants to leave Konohagakure, but some things are fixed and wrapped and tied with a bow, and it's far too late to throw a tantrum now.

The sweetness drips from his lips, sticky and disturbingly delicious. He starts not completely spitting whenever he wakes in the night and Naruto curls a demanding hand over his throat. He savors the way the last few drop against his tongue; warm honey and candied cherries and sugar-spun licorice, rich and red. It tastes like victory, like deceit and heavy lust, and Sasuke doesn't like to admit it, but who is he to deny such glory?

Uchiha Sasuke has never been especially good at resisting temptation, whether it is the dramatically sharp angle of Naruto's hipbones, or the sibilant hiss of whispered revenge.

Naruto watches Sasuke's tongue move frantically, searchingly against the walls of his mouth, and then presses the curve of his thumb along the edge of his kunai distractedly until it splits his flesh, red spilling into the grooves of his fingers; a sticky, rusty-sweet syrup.

He boils them eggs in the small gray hours of the morning after they have both woken up gasping and turned away from each other, two outward facing parentheses poised at the brink of a unspoken sentence.

Bubbling In the heavy black iron skillet that fits so comfortably in his hand now, the eggs are shapeless white ghosts in the water. Naruto looks over his shoulder, to where Sasuke is sitting at their tiny kitchen table, naked and pale, all long sharp lines of legs and arms and hands, like a porcelain puppet out on display. His eyes are blank and his tongue moves incessantly in the red hollow of his mouth. Caught in the light from the yellow fluorescent bulb above their heads, it glistens like the glittering undulations of a fish.

Naruto burns his tongue on love and underdone egg-whites, knowing it is just a matter of time.

Sasuke pushes his plate away.

X

_Fin_

A/N: Thank you for reading. Any Feedback is much appreciated.


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